Storing products to be commissioned manually as a reserve in static bays is state of the art.
Flow shelves are used if it is necessary to store and refill larger quantities of products. The products are filled in original containers or cardboard boxes into the rear side of the flow shelf. The cardboard boxes are opened on the front side when needed and individual products are taken for manual commissioning.
There also are solutions in which the filling of the throughput channels is carried out by a two-dimensionally movable bay storage and retrieval unit, which is guided on rails and is longitudinally displaceable and at the same time adjustable in height in order to introduce products into a bay. The products are introduced here first on a parking space in the bay storage and retrieval unit and pushed into the flow shelf as needed.
The solution with a bay storage and retrieval unit for automatic filling has a number of drawbacks:                The possibility of retrofitting is almost always nonexistent because the buildings are too low in the area of the automatic units, and the ceilings have a load-bearing capacity that is too low for a high bay.        The throughput of a bay storage and retrieval unit is in many cases insufficient to transfer the desired quantity of products from parking spaces into the throughput channels.        Solutions with bay storage and retrieval units have to rely on the storage of a standard container. At least the width must be equal (e.g., 1 cardboard box of 600×400 or two cardboard boxes of 300×400).        All products in the flow shelves must be first introduced into the bay.        The energy consumption and electric connected loads of a bay storage and retrieval unit are so high that the electric supply lines are often insufficient.        